Female prisoners are far more expensive, per head, than male prisoners. The Dom Post seems to think that’s a bad thing:

Women behind bars are more expensive than even the most dangerous offenders in maximum security, with their daily cost to the country rising by $150 in the past five years.

Only, further down the article we learn that it’s really just because there are so few female prisoners that Corrections can’t achieve the economies of scale that they can with the men.

All of the capital costs associated with the running and maintenance of the facilitates were included in calculating the costs of each prisoner.

“As the numbers of women prisoners are substantially less than that of males, women prisoners draw a larger proportion of capital costs than male prisoners,”…

The cost had increased due to capital investment needed to build additional facilities and upgrade current facilities…

OK, so to recap, very few women are in jail relative to men. They cost far less in total to house than the men. They don’t even need a maximum security women’s jail because there are so few high-risk women. But according to the Dom Post, the problem isn’t all the male offenders, it’s the cost of the women. At least they included the lines about capital costs, I guess…